1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to setting cameras (e.g. pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) cameras) that have the capability of capturing direction adjustment, and more particularly, to a method for managing a surveillance system and an associated apparatus.
2. Description of the Prior Art
According to the related art, when a user of a conventional digital surveillance system wants to modify settings of a specific pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) camera in the conventional digital surveillance system, the user may encounter some problems which render them unable to finish the entire setting flow quickly. For example, the procedure of setting a series of preset positioning points is very long and complicated. Further, due to the setting functions provided by the conventional digital surveillance system, the user may have insufficient information when setting patrol routes, which makes the user unable to quickly and intuitively set a desired surveillance range.
The user is therefore forced to operate buttons representing up, down, left and/or right movements to control a direction of the PTZ camera in order to move the PTZ camera to a preset positioning point of various desired positioning points, and then must record this preset positioning point. The user usually has to rotate the PTZ camera to a specific location before setting a preset positioning point. If there is a total of four preset positioning points PA, PB, PC, and PD, the user must set the positions four times, i.e. the operation of setting a preset positioning point has to be performed four times. When setting patrol routes, the user is usually guided to decide an order of a plurality of positioning points (e.g. “Preset positioning point PA→Preset positioning point PB→Preset positioning point PC→Preset positioning point PD”; or “Preset positioning point PA→Preset positioning point PC→Preset positioning point PB→Preset positioning point PD”). The order of the series of preset positioning points will be utilized to represent the patrol route. In a case where there is a total of four preset positioning points PA, PB, PC, and PD that are selectable, the user can only utilize the names “PA, PB, PC and PD” of the preset positioning points to abstractly plan their order.
The procedure of setting the preset positioning points takes considerable time and effort, and it is difficult to know where the PTZ camera is going to shoot from according to the names “PA, PB, PC and PD”. In a situation where the number of PTZ cameras is larger than one, the user is forced to repeatedly perform the same operation, which is inconvenient when setting routes for the conventional digital surveillance system.
Related art experimental methods to solve the abovementioned problem are not without side effects. For example, one experimental method performs image analysis to automatically generate patrol routes. Although this conventional method may automatically generate patrol routes without requiring manual operations, the patrol routes are generated depending on algorithms and are thus unreliable. Further, the user cannot set personal preferred patrol routes when this method is applied.
In view of the above, related art techniques cannot provide an appropriate service for users. Therefore, there is a need for a novel method which can improve the control of settings for a digital surveillance system.